Have you ever wished you could use Visual Basic to make web pages?

Oh, well, if you change your mind, there's always ASP.

ASP, or Active Server Pages, is a server-side scripting language, like ColdFusion, Java Server Pages or PHP (to name a few). The language is very similar to Visual Basic, which really, really, really turns me off of it. Thanks to HTML::Mason, I don't have to worry about using anything other than the glorious Perl for server-side scripting, but that's an entirely different matter.

ASP is a stagnant server-side scripting language developed by Microsoft. It was an early pioneer in the realm of server-side scripting (which, thought I've used several times, I have not yet defined: that is, a script that executes on the side of the server to generate dynamic content to the client). It has since been superseded by ASP.NET, which I have never used, but I would imagine is infinitely better (being that it allows the usage of any .NET language, instead of just VB).

The book is your standard Wrox guide to the language, giving a tutorial on the language, a bunch of meaningful examples, and even an exhaustive language reference. Though, I must say, after the development of .NET, any ASP reference is sure to be outdated, unless you're working on some primitive system and are not able to upgrade to the ASP.NET. I imagine it would also, on some level, act as a VBA reference, but don't hold me to it.

Anyway, if you're dead set on reading this book, read it. Otherwise, take my suggestion and go with a more recent publication in this vein. If Wrox has an ASP.NET book, then by all means get it instead, and convince your boss, or whoever signs the checks for the web page to drop ASP and go with something better (which may not be ASP.NET, as some other languages, such as Mason, are free and very, very powerful). ( )